Leaving Yesterday
by Peripheral Vision
Summary: Roy drinks, remembers and forgets while Ed engages in petty larceny.


Fridays meant meeting Hughes at the bar at the end of the day, exchanging information and rumors and dirty jokes over scotch. Bourbon, sometimes, if Roy was in the mood; just something that could be sipped and swirled thoughtfully in the glass. Roy liked his alcohol dark and neat. Hughes considered this more of a social engagement than a military one, but Hughes indulged in unwarranted sentimentality as a habit and Roy had no opinion about it either way.

"Psiren's struck eight times in the past month," Hughes said. They spoke quietly as a matter of course, not quite looking at each other. The bar was dark and unofficially military, oak paneling and the lull of other sotto voices drifting through the smoke making conversation seem impenetrable. But they were both men who were good at what they did, and the truly important things would not be spoken of here at all. "Aqua Roya is going to request backup in a week. Two at most, guaranteed."

"Tell them we can't spare anyone. Psiren's a tourist trap, not a threat. If the police force wasn't enjoying the whole escapade they would have found a way to put a stop to it months ago."

Hughes laughed, fingers tapping on the folder of the latest batch of pictures of Alicia. Gracia had bought the girl a new teddy bear and she was already learning her colors. Hughes was taking this as a sign she had a natural aptitude for the arts. "The police aren't the only ones. In her last notice, Psiren sent her regards to Edward Elric."

Roy raised an eyebrow. "Did she now."

"'My next heist will be so perfect that not even the Fullmetal Alchemist could catch me,' the note said."

Roy considered this. "Don't tell him that."

Hughes laughed again, louder when he saw Roy's smirk. "Probably a good idea. So the Elric brothers are back at headquarters now, huh?"

A patently stupid question. It was impossible to miss when Edward and Alphonse came back; it was like the return of a loud and chaotic spring. Hughes must have seen them in the canteen, in the library, pacing outside someone's office with barely restrained impatience. Edward Elric was a lot of things, and most of them added up to being underfoot. "Please don't remind me."

Hughes leaned back slightly on his stool, bringing his drink with him to perch on the edge of the bar. The glass was precisely balanced to not tip over, and that Hughes could calculate such a thing effortlessly spoke much of his skill. That he didn't even think to disguise such an action revealed more and less complimentary things. "Oh come on. It isn't that bad." 

Roy's staff also liked the energy that infused the building when they were around, he knew. They thought of Ed's outbursts almost like improvisational theater and at the very least a break from the routine. It wasn't worth correcting them on. "You're not the one Ed's bothering every five minutes. 'Colonel, you knew that mission would have complications, didn't you? Colonel, why are there only twenty books in the library about the psychobiological effects of arrays? Colonel, my feet hurt!'"

Hughes didn't look particularly impressed with Roy's impression. "He's always complaining to me that you're a closed-mouthed bastard."

Since Roy didn't see the need to refute either of these accusations, he took a drink. It wasn't a very good blend and by now he felt more of the antiseptic than the flavor or the burn. It was his third, he thought, and since the best he could do was guess it was the last he would be having with Hughes. There was a twelve-year-old bottle waiting in his apartment for later. "Probably the kindest thing he says."

Hughes grinned but kept his silence. The Major was the closest thing the Elrics had to a confidant on the base, although that might be more Hughes' imagination than anything else. The man had a way of coloring his vision of the world with pastels. Still, it was a privacy best left alone. Edward's illusions of security were thin and the paranoia which kept him company was more an outgrowth of caution than anything ridiculous or extreme. Faith, of any kind, was hard to come by. But, if it came to it, easy enough to exploit.

Roy noticed with vague disinterest that his glass was empty and he pushed it away, letting his hands dangle in his lap like useless heavy things. "He's been asking about Luze recently."

Hughes groaned sympathetically; there was no real need for elaboration. Even Hawkeye, who could only be provoked into harmless insubordination by a day's worth of teasing or by watching Roy do something she considered irredeemably male, had spoken hesitantly to him about being kinder to Ed. His age and his past needed to be accommodated; allowances should be made for his behavior. Hughes had never mentioned anything of the sort, but it was hard to tell whether he understood or simply doesn't consider it his place. It wasn't a matter of dislike, after all, and confidence could be kept in many ways.

By the time the tab was paid and more pictures were offered and rejected, the discussion had drifted to shallower waters. The summer air felt thicker in his mouth than the alcohol had when Roy stepped out in the night to go home.

It took him a few blocks to realize habit was making him walk to the base, not his apartment, and quick on its heels was the realization that it doesn't make much of a difference. There was no one waiting for him at home. (Except for the scotch. Also at least half a bottle of vodka in the icebox, and maybe the remains of a six pack, left over from something.) There hadn't been for a few weeks now, and maybe he should do something to remedy that soon. Smalltalk at the end of the day was a chore, but the emptiness had been leering at him lately when he put his valise down on the table and he could almost hear the dust settling in the corners with steady patience. Distraction, Roy had learned a long time ago, was a necessary commodity.

He used to have dreams, which by midday he found embarrassing for being cliche more than horrifying, about landscape scoured by sand and licked red by what could be either sunset or flames. Faces he didn't remember as well. He did not, in all honesty, have the time for such reconstruction.

He could pick up some work to do over the weekend. Perhaps call a driver to bring him home afterwards if he wasn't up for a longer walk.

He couldn't quite remember the name of the night secretary in the lobby, but she smiled when she saw him, one hand coming up to hover anxiously by her hair. "Colonel Mustang. I suppose this isn't a surprise."

He returned the smile automatically because he was making her self-conscious. "And why is that?"

"Why, the Fullmetal Alchemist is up in your office right now. He said he was working late." Something must have slipped in his expression because she blinked, too alarmed to continue primping. "That's all right, isn't it, Colonel? I was under the impression he had security clearance."

"Oh, it's fine," Roy reassured her with a renewal of his grin, toying with the idea of getting her fired. As a National Alchemist there was nothing preventing Ed from wandering around at all hours of the night, but no one who knew Fullmetal and his zealous rampages would ever let him do it unsupervised. Roy waved at the secretary as he passed. He could probably find a way to dock her pay if he still felt like it in the morning. "Keep up the good work."

His footsteps echoed in the hallway. The darkness made everything feel at wrong angles and vaguely subterranean, like a mineshaft, and it was interesting that in his place of authority and power he managed to feel buried.

The door to his office was closed but the lock had been melted through. Roy sighed, more at the clumsiness then having his suspicions confirmed. Trust Ed to understand the broader outline of subtlety only to misunderstand the details. He pushed on the door with gloved fingers and it swung open without a creak.

Not that it even mattered, particularly, since Edward was muttering to himself too loudly and too angrily to pick up external activity. He was rummaging sloppily through the file cabinet, his back to Roy and his braid bobbing rapidly. Folders were tossed in a rough half-circle around him, white typing paper everywhere like feathers or blood. "Fucking stupid Colonel, where could he have hidden them, trust a smirking manipulative bastard like that to have a system normal people can't make /sense/ of, the minute I find these things I'm gonna-"

Roy cleared his throat, pointedly. Ed's eyes must have adjusted to the light because he recognized Roy the minute his head whipped around. His body followed half a beat later when the boy nearly jumped, his feet clear off the ground. Ed's face was frozen somewhere between panic and horror upon reentry. "Colonel!"

Roy sighed again, rubbing his forehead. "Where's Alphonse?"

Ed twitched. "Why would Al be here?"

"You wouldn't try to break into my office without backup and /he/ wouldn't let you do something this dangerous by yourself. Where's your brother?"

Ed had collected himself during Roy's little speech and was facing him with squared shoulders and clenched fists and the self-righteous bravery of an innocent man headed for the gallows. "Al's lookout in the back. But this wasn't his idea and he didn't agree to it or anything. If you're going to punish anyone it should be me, not him." Ed's voice was a little too low and as formal as it ever got. He was trying to meet Roy's eyes, and Roy must have been drunker than he thought because that was either funny or terribly pathetic.

Roy stared at him for a moment, then went to the decanter on the shelf. The drink he poured was slightly too tall for polite company. He turned around again to see Ed hovering uncertainly a few feet away, and his irritation at that was clear in his tone. "Why are you /here/, Fullmetal?"

Edward made a little sound and craned forward a bit before he looked down and to the side, sullen suddenly. "Luze City... no one would tell me anything about it and I couldn't find information in the library. And the information /had/ to be in here, so..."

"So," Roy agreed. Ed still had the gall, the unmitigated /stupidity/, to wear defiance in his scowl and abruptly Roy wanted to shake him, crush those small shoulders until he forced out some sign of contrition. It was an odd impulse and an incongruous one, and Roy put it aside. "This was pretty thoughtless, even for you."

Ed bristled, as stoic now as a cat dunked in water. "You wouldn't tell me anything! I didn't have any other choice!"

"Didn't you now." Sometimes it struck Roy how very much a child Ed was, despite the genius and drive. Most of the time it was just with a sense of peculiarity, of having to continually tune his evaluation of the boy, but the knowledge felt heavy in his stomach tonight. "Wait there."

Ed watched him as he opens his desk drawer, slid open a secret compartment, took out a key with which he opened the filing cabinet, took another key from there and unlocked a safe beneath the painting behind his desk. Roy flipped through the contents then tossed a manilla folder, unmarked and unassuming, on the desk. "Here."

Ed's focus shifted to the file. "What is it?"

"The official report on the incident in Luze." Ed looked up sharply and Roy matched his gaze, feeling steel creep in. "Go ahead."

Edward's mouth tightened for a moment before he marched to the desk, picking up the folder and skimming it with devout concentration. 

"Luze. A small settlement to the north," Roy retrieved his drink and sat down in his desk chair. "Ten years after it was established an anarchist group sprang up and began spreading literature, destroying some property. Our operatives caught wind of it and rounded up the leaders for questioning. Two were jailed for a sentence of seven years. That's all. No rumors of the Philosopher's Stone. I was the only National Alchemist involved and only on an administrative level."

Ed kept reading for a few minutes after Roy finished, might have even read it twice. With a growl, he slammed the folder back on the desk. "If that was it, why didn't you /tell/ me?!"

Roy regarded him blandly. "It was outside your jurisdiction."

Ed turned his head away, teeth clenched. Roy felt the beginnings of a feline smirk playing around his mouth.

"Just because you want to know something doesn't mean you're entitled to, Fullmetal," Roy continued, leaning back. "You are not that special. You have to act in accordance to the rules, like everyone else."

"Don't patronize me!" Edward snapped, the grimness of his anger replaced by a fiercer thread.

Roy's fist hit the desk. "Don't /make me/, Fullmetal."

Edward's glare softened into something pensive, and Roy wondered, startling himself, if he hadn't been with Hughes - if it had been just him and a bottle to be emptied - exactly what sort of reception he might have given Ed tonight. The thought soured his gut but another thing inside him jittered, and Roy looked away from the line of Edward's jaw.

"Sometimes disasters just happen," he found himself saying. "And there's no reason or anything you can learn. The most you can do is remember and move on."

He gets a look from underneath long bangs that wavers between sullen, resentful and furious. Maybe a little pained. "I know that."

Roy raises an eyebrow. "I suppose you do."

A moment or two passed in silence. Ed's expression was unusually obtuse, and Roy simply felt weary and old.

If he was hard on Edward, it wasn't to a degree the boy couldn't understand or survive. He had chosen his burdens. It was his responsibility to accept them.

Eventually, Roy rose to his feet, a little less steadily than he would have liked. "I'm leaving, Fullmetal. Your punishment - not Alphonse's - is to clean this place up. If you look through any of my papers, I'll know."

"Y-Yes," Edward said with a blink and a move that resembled coming to attention. In the doorway Roy gave him one last look. He knew Edward's shoulders could handle the weight. Sometimes it was even easy for Roy to convince himself he wasn't going to drown.

He went home.


End file.
